Campaign of the Month:
June 2013

Rise of the Dead

Shamblers

Shamblers are the dead that have reanimated and walk the earth with only one purpose, to feed on the living. The shambler is not intelligent and an easy threat to take care of if alone. However, the shambler’s main weapons are persistence and numbers; they will never ever get tired and stop hunting the living, and in large numbers they can easily overwhelm even the most prepared of defenders. It is well known that a lack of expertise when taking out a single shambler can escalate an easy “kill” into an impossible situation as a wild shot from a gun can attract huge hordes. Shamblers will never stop coming, and it is this that can emotionally erode a group of survivors to the point of frustration, desperation, and even lack of determination to survive.

Shamblers do not feel emotion or pain and therefore they are able to ignore horrific injuries to their body. They are relentless and will continue to hunt the living despite broken bones. They move slowly with a shambling gait (hence the name) and are very strong given that they do not feel any pain or tiredness of the muscles. Also, they smell really bad. They are the walking dead and as such will smell the same as a dead body which is a horrific stench.

A shambler will try to grab a living human in order to consume their flesh and even brains – a single bite from a shambler will pass on the infection to that person. Shamblers only hunt the living and will ignore the deceased, even if they are recently dead (for example, a heart attack victim).

One sub-category of shambler is the crawler. This is a zombie that has been involved in a horrific accident either through its own lack of self preservation, or by a failed kill attempt from a human. With the legs disabled or completely removed, a crawler is still a very real threat if not noticed until the last minute.

The only manner in which a Shambler can be immediately and permanently stopped is to completely destroy the brain. Note: if the head of a Shambler is separated cleanly from its body, this zombie will still for some time be dangerous and capable of infecting living humans through its bite.

Decay

Decay (or decomposition) is the physical state that is the result of the cascading effects of the ending of biological activity from the cellular level to the organ level to the organ-system level.

Living organisms constantly experience cellular-level regeneration and repair. For example, living humans constantly shed dead skin cells and replace them with regenerated skin cells; living human muscles are constantly repairing microscopic tears throughout their use. Shamblers are technically dead and thus do not regenerate nor repair any parts of their physical bodies.

The accumulated effect of this lack of regeneration and repair is biological decay.

Infection

Infection is spread through a Zombie Bite. Once Bitten the victim will eventually die and return as one of the undead. The Infection causes a incredibly high fever that cause death within 3 to 12 hours. If the Victim is bite, but killed before the fever spread, the victim still become one of the walking dead.

The Infection takes 1 – 3 minutes to Spread throughout the body. During this time it is possible to stop the infect if the affected limb is somehow removed. There is still a chance that if the victim dies he/she will still become a Shambler.